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12 Things Parents Should Know When Talking To Kids About Coronavirus
Trying to get answers makes us feel safer. This isn’t just true for adults. It’s true for kids, too. That’s why it’s important to talk with kids during times of crisis and uncertainty.
While parents grapple with making sense of it all, kids aren’t immune to the stories. Kids are dealing with their own social and academic uncertainties and highly tuned in to their own sources and worries. Kids hear a lot of what adults hear but it’s filtered and translated by young brains and shared around the playground or in the chat in Minecraft. This means kids are easy targets for misinformation. Add to this the tendency of all of us to hyper-focus on the scariest things when we’re already afraid. When you don’t know much about viruses and epidemiology — and how many of us do–a lot of wrong information can sound very believable and terrifying.
As coronavirus cascades around us, it’s easy to become anxious and fearful. That is, after all, a natural response to the inability to control danger. Blame the reptilian brain. During times of stress, we have an instinctive need to seek information.
Don’t let the narratives around coronavirus get defined by the media. Even when there are no easy answers, open communication based on facts rather than fear and rumors go a long way toward making us feel…
